


struck gold and senseless

by intoxicatelou



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Magic, Resurrection, Soul Bond, everyone thinks Tony and Peter are married and what about it, fluff & grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:48:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28284993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intoxicatelou/pseuds/intoxicatelou
Summary: “Remember when you thought Mr. Stark and I were married?”Everything else from Titan was fading so fast, and yet this memory sticks.“Oh yeah,” Rocket says, where he’s curled in Thor’s lap, a pink and purple space beer in his hand. “To be fair kid,  your species shows a weird level of platonic affection that would be considered marriage in most galaxies.”
Relationships: Peter Parker/Tony Stark
Comments: 5
Kudos: 161
Collections: Ironspiders Georg Secret Stocking Stuffer Exchange 2020





	struck gold and senseless

**Author's Note:**

  * For [toucanpie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toucanpie/gifts).



> this is far too poetic and far too reliant on a single image, but i thought if anyone could find joy in it, it would be you, my dearest toucan. merry christmas :,)

> **What to call the awful thrill of your mouth,**  
>  **soaring afternoon, the eloquence of grass**  
>  **struck gold and senseless.**
> 
> — Christina Im 

= 

Peter’s in the middle of half-explaining the actual plot of _Footloose_ to Drax and half-protesting against its brilliance to Quill when the insect-lady crashes into him. 

Titan’s full of gravitation anomalies, and maybe Mr. Stark had been right about advising against using said gravitation anomalies as trampolines, Peter thinks as he coughs face-first on the swirl of red dust. 

The insect-lady’s antennas twitch as she blinks, blushes, one hand pressed to the center of Peter’s chest. She gives Peter a strange, unnerving look while sprawled on top of him. Drax helps her up, stating, “You should not jump on people without their permission, Mantis!” 

“It’s okay, I’m fine,” Peter says, getting to his own feet, taking a step back from Mantis. He knows he should feel a certain kinship with the insect-lady what with being part spider and all that, but so far she’s the only one of the Guardians that still scares him, just a little. _You really need to lay off the weird space movies, kid_ is what Mr. Stark had said when Peter tried to talk to him about it a little earlier. 

“I’m sorry! I had no idea he and the Man of Iron were...” She stops speaking, alarmed.

“Mated. You were going to say mated, admit it.” Drax blinks before he laughs loudly, causing Peter to wince at the sudden loud noise. He points at Quill. “HA, I win!” 

“Really Peter? You could do so much better than that asshole,” Quill grumbles, before coughing up what Peter thought must be some sort of alien currency until Drax put it in his mouth and started to chew. 

“Um, I’m sorry but you’re wrong, there’s nothing going on between M-Mr. Stark and me,” Peter sputters, caught in the crossfire of Quill and Drax’s unconvinced stare. 

Peter looks around, grateful for Titan’s abnormal geography. Luckily, Mr. Stark was still convening with Dr. Strange behind some giant space rock, going over the finer details of their plan to defeat Thanos, completely unaware of this conversation. 

“I’m not kidding, he’s just my mentor,” Peter tries again, despite Drax’s blank stare.

“When I first met my Ovette, she was also a mentor to me in understanding the fine art of sexual —” 

“Okay _no,_ I mean Mr. Stark practically considers himself to be like a father-figure?” Peter does his best not to cringe, hiding the flash of frustration that runs through him,“Or a cool uncle at the very least?” 

Quill just makes a face, frowning. “Gross, I don’t need to know more about your weird old man kinks.”

“Mr. Stark isn’t that old,” Peter blurts out, automatic only to realize that defense was hardly helping his case here. 

“Man, you really have it bad for him, don’t you?” Quill shakes his head, with a snicker. “Come on Drax, let’s go wrestle on the jumpy gravity thingy.”

Peter sighs, defeated before turning to the insect-lady and asking, “Can’t you tell them — there’s nothing going on with me and Mr. Stark?”

Mantis continues to stare at him with that strange, curious look on her face. It’s almost as if she knows something Peter doesn’t. 

“We’re not mated, or married, or whatever. There’s nothing, M-Mr. Stark doesn’t see me like that.” Peter mumbles the last part, because, well. It’s not like he needs to bother the insect-lady with his stupid not-so-little crush on Mr. Stark.

“Oh Peter, I am sorry,” Mantis says, “I cannot speak of this to you. Not yet, anyway.” She shakes her head walking away and leaving Peter more confused than ever. 

_Not yet?_ “It’s not like you can read the future, right?” Peter shrugs, half-ready to walk away from this weird interaction because yeah, they’re in space but there’s no _way_ insect-lady could like not without the time stone right — 

She pauses as if considering her words before all but whispering, “I can’t _tell_ you anything.” 

Peter’s eyes widen. 

“What can’t you tell me about?” he asks, but she just shakes her head. That’s all the warning Peter gets before she steps forward, placing a palm to his forehead. 

It’s like a burst of light behind his eyelids. He sees a field of gold, a hand smoothing the inside of his wrist, fingers weaving themselves into his hair. 

“ _Peter,_ ” someone says in the dream, and it sounds so much like — _I’ve had this dream before,_ Peter realizes with a jolt. It’s not just the voice, he would know those hands anywhere. 

Peter’s dreamt of those hands touching him since he was sixteen. 

==

_And that’s all it’ll ever be,_ Peter thinks later, as he tastes ash. 

==

_Only a dream._ Peter doesn’t want to leave Mr. Stark’s body, wants to cling a moment longer to the burning iron, a hand smoothing the inside of his wrist, fingers weaving into his hair — 

==

Tony Stark dies. 

Peter doesn’t dream anymore. Instead, he watches the man he loves disappear with a single snap, over and over again — the gold fading into blood and fire every time. 

It feels cruel to live in the aftermath, but Peter does. He lives. He brushes the dust off Spider-man. He finishes high-school, earns a full ride to Columbia. Mr. Stark would almost be proud, he thinks. 

==

Peter’s twenty-one before he thinks about the strange dream again. Twenty-one and freshly drunk at Thor and Rocket’s Christmas party because they did things like that lately, throw parties together, one unit, or _practically disgustingly married_ as Quill put it. 

“Remember when you thought Mr. Stark and I were married?” 

Everything else from Titan was fading so fast, and yet this memory sticks. 

“Oh yeah,” Rocket says, where he’s curled in Thor’s lap, a pink and purple space beer in his hand. “ To be fair kid, your species shows a weird level of platonic affection that would be considered marriage in most galaxies.” 

“Right,” Peter says, trying to hide the grimace in his voice as he sinks into his seat, throwing back another shot of some green liquor that tastes like lemons.

He should be happier, Peter thinks as he stares past the Guardians to the glittering universe in the window. He’s celebrating Christmas _in space._

It was better than the alternative — better than May and Happy fawning over each other, better than Morgan’s sad eyes over facetime because Pepper had moved them to California a year ago. 

Suddenly Peter couldn’t help the swell of nausea rising inside him and he staggered to his feet, walking towards the ship’s bathroom. 

He doesn’t see Mantis as he corners the hallway, too busy in his own guilt. 

“Oh-Sorry,” Peter stutters, too late as Mantis places a hand on his bare arm to catch herself.

 _Careful, Peter_ says the voice in his head, loud, clear, and unmistakably Mr. Stark. 

Peter jumps back, his spidey senses kicking in. “What — How —” 

Mantis looks at him, her eyes wide but no sound coming out of her mouth. Before Peter can ask, she turns around and walks away into the fairly alien crowd. 

==

Peter doesn’t see Mantis again for a long while, but it’s like that over the months that follow. Peter will hear fragments of Mr. Stark’s voice fading in and out of his life, sometimes at the grocery store ( _really kid, you need to eat more_ ), sometimes on patrol ( _right behind you, Pete_ ), and almost always when he’s touching himself, late at night, whimpering into the dark of his dorm room ( _you’re so good for me, kid, so good for me)_. 

It isn’t spectacularly healthy, but it’s better than nothing. As the days pass, Peter thinks he understands why he can’t move on like the rest of them. To do so now would be to lose a part of himself. 

==

It’s Doctor Strange who notices Peter’s auditory hallucinations. They’d grown so common that Peter had begun responding to them, absently, small things, like a laugh or a nod or a roll of his eyes, sometimes even a huff. The things he heard were always fragments, arbitrary comments, clearly conjured up despite how distinctly they sounded like Mr. Stark. 

Peter was shelving books in the Sanctum when he hears Mr. Stark whisper behind him, _can’t the wizard just use magic to shelve his Harry Potter collection?_

“Oh my god, stop it.” Peter responds out loud on instinct, a laugh bubbling in his throat. 

“Peter?” Doctor Strange responds, a moment later, and Peter stiffens. In hearing Tony’s chatter in his head, he’d missed the sound of footsteps walking into his room. “Were you talking to someone?” 

“I think you might’ve misheard me, sorry! I was just - just laughing about this book,” Peter says, stumbling over his words. 

“What’s so funny about _Blackthorn’s Botanical Magic?_ ” Doctor Strange presses, his eyes narrowing. 

_It’s like this guy can’t even hear what he sounds like, sheesh,_ whispers the Mr. Stark’s voice in his head and Peter bites his lip to stop himself from laughing. 

“You’re doing it again, Peter,” Doctor Strange says, walking closer, his coak floating behind him.

“Doing what again?” Peter tries, schooling his face the best he can. 

“Talking to Tony Stark,” Doctor Strange states and Peter blinks back at him, in shock. “I’ve had my suspicions, you’ve got a rather strange aura around you ever since the battle with Thanos. Something straight out of an ancient binding spell… but I wasn’t sure. I needed time to research, to process.” 

_Binding spell?_ Peter thinks, his heart rate speeding up. “I don’t really talk to him though, it’s just… it’s just hallucinations. I looked it up. It’s not real.” 

Doctor Strange ignores his comment, instead his fingers twist and a ray of pink sparks shoot towards Peter. Peter shivers as they surround him, no longer pink, but a circle of gold. 

“This is remarkable,” Doctor Strange murmurs, studying the pattern of the magic surrounding Peter. “You’re betrothed.” 

Peter’s eyes widen. He can’t help but think about some of his last memories on Titan, the way the Guardians had looked at him and Mr. Stark, how sure they were there was something deeper. 

“You’re lying,” Peter says, against his better judgement, the cynicism rising fast inside him. “I’m not anything. I never told him and now he’s dead.” 

“Magic isn’t always spoken, Peter,” Doctor Strange says, waving his hands and the circle surrounding Peter vanishes. “Sometimes it is felt beyond language, beyond time, beyond the very borders of life and death.” 

“I saw him die,” Peter whispers, the book in his hand slipping slightly out of his grasp. He puts it down before touching his face, feeling the wet wash of tears. “I was there, Doctor Strange, I saw him, his eyes, his body, the burns —”

“You saw his body die, correct,” Doctor Strange says, “but not his soul. It lives with you. I suspect it did even when his body was alive.” 

“You’re not making any sense,” Peter says. His mind was whirring, and he could feel the oncoming storm of what would be another spectacular panic attack if Doctor Strange didn’t stop talking. He couldn’t think about the impossible. Tony Stark was dead. Peter had read the headlines. He’d lived them. 

“Peter,” Doctor Strange says, firm. “You’re not listening to me. Tony bonded himself to you and you to him. As long as one of you lives, the other cannot truly die. With you here, I can bring him back.” 

“You don’t mean it,” Peter tries, but then Doctor Strange is in his space, his hand comes up to the side of Peter’s head and pulls sharply to extract a couple brown hairs. 

Peter winces at the pain, flabbergasted, but before he can ask otherwise, Doctor Strange was floating in the air, the strands of Peter’s hair burning in his palm and whispering a mantra in a language Peter had no luck deciphering. 

A circle of gold appears, similar to the one that had enveloped Peter earlier, only this time it wasn’t transparent but shimmering into an image of an open field, green and gold grass stretching as far as the eye can see. And in the distance, a blurry figure slowly sharpening as he walks closer and closer and closer —

“Mr. Stark,” Peter chokes out, and then when the man is close enough to make out the slight flecks of grey in otherwise dark hair, the familiar warm smile, the crinkle of those brown eyes, “ _Tony.”_

“Took the wizard long enough to put it together,” Tony says as he steps through the portal, healthy and alive like he never went anywhere, shooting Doctor Strange a look, before letting his gaze land on Peter, “Thank you for waiting for me, kid.” 

_Always,_ Peter thinks but he can’t speak, instead takes one unsteady step closer, reaching out to Tony to make sure he’s real, that this isn’t some mirage. And it isn’t, because there’s fingers in his hair, the smell of expensive cologne filling his senses, Tony’s mouth sloping against his own, sweet and warm, and as his eyes flutter close, Peter sees gold. 

It’s better than he could’ve dreamed. It’s the start of something far better.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to be totally honest, I've been having a weirdly hard time writing fanfic lately bc of Life, so again I apologize if this isn't very good or seems bad! my only wish is that this made you smile, or at least ~ feel ~ something. 
> 
> as always, comments and kudos are welcome!


End file.
